Can a virus fight cancer?

27-07-2012: Two Ottawa researchers are taking innovative approaches to improving virus-based cancer therapy with new funding from the Canadian Cancer Society.

Viruses that selectively target and kill cancer cells — called oncolytic viruses — are an exciting new avenue for treating cancer because healthy cells are spared and side effects are reduced. The problem is that many tumors are able to protect themselves by unleashing defense mechanisms that disarm these viruses.

Two researchers are each tackling this problem with creative approaches that involve delivering the viruses in combination with new drugs to make the treatments more effective than either would be alone.

Dr Jean-Simon Diallo of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute is receiving $200,000 to study the use of a specially engineered virus given in combination with a novel type of drug to help the virus overcome the tumor's defense mechanisms. Using a unique mathematical model, he will use results from this newly funded research to predict the success of other drug-virus combinations.

Dr Diallo's highly innovative research proposes a creative solution to disarming tumors' defense mechanisms with novel drugs, while also accelerating development of oncolytic viruses through mathematical modeling.

Dr Robert Korneluk of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario is receiving $200,000 to study whether the defense mechanisms that tumors use to protect themselves from viruses can be turned against them.

Dr Korneluk is studying a group of experimental drugs that are highly effective in killing cancer cells, particularly in the presence of a specific compound. This compound is produced both by the immune system and by cancer cells and can result in actually protecting the tumour cells from viruses. In Dr Korneluk's innovative project, he will test whether, when given in combination with a cancer-killing virus, these experimental drugs can effectively destroy cancer cells.